Hide the decline and rewrite history?

Human emissions of carbon dioxide began a sharp rise from 1945. But, temperatures, it seems, may have plummeted over half the globe during the next few decades. Just how large or how insignificant was that decline?

Frank Lansner has found an historical graph of northern hemisphere temperatures from the mid 70′s, and it shows a serious decline in temperatures from 1940 to 1975. It’s a decline so large that it wipes out the gains made in the first half of the century, and brings temperatures right back to what they were circa 1910. The graph was not peer reviewed, but presumably it was based on the best information available at the time. In any case, if all the global records are not available to check, it’s impossible to know how accurate or not this graph is. The decline apparently recorded was a whopping 0.5°C.

But, three decades later, by the time Brohan and the CRU graphed temperatures in 2006 from the same old time period, the data had been adjusted (surprise), so that what was a fall of 0.5°C had become just a drop of 0.15°C. Seventy percent of the cooling was gone.

Maybe they had good reasons for making these adjustments. But, as usual, the adjustments were in favor of the Big Scare Campaign, and the reasons and the original data are not easy to find.

Matthews 1976, National Geographic, Temperatures 1880-1976

The blue line is the adjusted CRU average from 2006

If temperature sets across the northern hemisphere were really showing that 1940 was as hot as 2000, that makes it hard to argue that the global warming that occurred from 1975 to 2000 was almost solely due to carbon, since it wasn’t unusual (at least not for half the globe), and didn’t correlate at all with our carbon emissions, the vast majority of which occurred after 1945.

The US records show that the 1930′s were as hot as the 1990′s. And the divergence problem in tree rings is well known. Many tree rings showed a decline after 1960 that didn’t “concur” with the surface records. Perhaps these tree rings agree with the surface records as recorded at the time, rather than as adjusted post hoc? Perhaps the decline in the tree rings that Phil Jones worked to hide was not so much a divergence from reality, but instead was slightly more real than the surface-UHI-cherry-picked-and-poorly-sited records?

Frank Lansner also discusses the data from Scandinavia, which originally showed that temperatures were roughly level from mid-century to the end of the century, but that the large decline from 1940 to 1975 was…adjusted out of existence. (My post on that here).

Scandinavian Temperatures: 25 data series combined from The Nordklim database (left), compared to the IPCC's temperature graph for the area.

Frank points out that while the older graph is not peer reviewed, the modern data sets are also not peer reviewed, so even if the papers they are published in are peer reviewed, it’s meaningless to claim this is significant when the underlying data can be adjusted years after its collection without documentation or review.

The CRU has an FAQ on their datasets, and it includes this comment on the accuracy of the hemispheric records:

In the hemispheric files averages are now given to a precision of three decimal places to enable seasonal values to be calculated to ±0.01°C. The extra precision implies no greater accuracy than two decimal places.

Do I read that correctly? After an adjustment that may be in the order of 0.34°C, the accuracy is ±0.01°C?

At the time when there was a Global Ice Age Scare, this graph appeared in Newsweek.

Newsweek: Global Temperatures 1880-1970 (NCAR)

Either 70% of the decline has been hidden in the years since then, or the climate scientists at the time were exaggerating the decline in order to support the Ice Age Scare (surely not!).

I still think it is delusional to believe that we can measure the average global temperature. There are insufficient measurement points to represent the enormous variability over very short distances and the accuracy of measurement over the last 150 years has to have changed.

If you take the average of a maximum and minimum reading in a 24 hour period, that will be different from the average of readings taken every 5 minutes over the same 24 hour period. Changes in measurement technology, such as continuous reading could be confounding the issue.

As for the degrees of precision that CRU have applied – don’t get me started. How can they imply measurements to 3 decimal places? My biometry lecturer would have disembowelled a student for such academic incompetence.

I totally agree. From an engineering viewpoint, the accuracy of calculations can never be higher than the precision of the original measurements, and is often less, depending on the math involved.

Many of the measurements used as input to the the computer models are manually recorded. Given the physical conditions in which some recordings are made (by eye, whilst standing in rain/snow/hail, wind, etceteras), we would be lucky if they were accurate to within one or two degrees.

One of my old lecturers (back in the ’60s) used to say that, given the accuracy of manual measurements, computer calculations can be no more accurate than those done on a slide rule, they are just faster, and give an illusion of accuracy.

Nice study on Greenland Ice cores that surprisingly includes Briffa and Jones of Climategate fame covered by CO2 Science.

Climatic signals in multiple highly resolved stable isotope records from Greenland
Quaternary Science Reviews vol 29: 522-538
From Abstract
“Winter season stable isotope data from ice core records that reach more than 1400 years back in time suggest that the warm period that began in the 1920s raised southern Greenland temperatures to the same level as those that prevailed during the warmest intervals of the Medieval Warm Period some 900–1300 years ago.”

There has been alot of work and questioning of the temperature measurement methods and accuracy , as indicated by the above comments, which I agree with.
Has anyone looked at and critically evaluated the methods to measure CO2 levels ? Or is everyone accepting them as OK ?

I LIVED through the decades of the 1960 and 1970′s and it was obviously cooler then for my region,where I have lived since 1964.

I remember the remarkable cold and snow spells in the 1970′s that have not been since witnessed in my area.It snowed 1″ on march 12 1974 where it is normally around 60 degrees,it was freezing that day and the snow stayed on the ground overnight.Then there was that 1″ + snow on the ground October 31st,where it is normally in the low 50′s and do not even see snowflakes until mid to late November.

The much higher frequency of Thunderstorms witnessed in the 1970′s because at the time we had a reliable pool of cold air come down from the Canadian north during the summer months.I live in Eastern Washington State and thus we are fairly exposed to some Canadian Polar air masses.

I remember the many concerns that were voiced of considerable cooling going on for more than 20 years at the time in the 1970′s.Enough where several publications and books were being published discussing the obvious apparent cooling trend.

That chart shown in Newsweek is a fair representative of what was being discussed at the time and note it was from NCAR,a then reputable research center that was considered a good source at the time.

At the time in the late 1970′s it was understood that around 1941 was the peak year for warmth and that the decade of the 1930′s was unusually hot.Then the cooling showed up by the early 1960′s that got a number of scientists wondering what was causing it.

CO2 reached 400 parts per million in 1942. We will hit that again. It sure wasn’t because of the war because it went upward from 1929 until 1942. I always expected an increase of temps caused more CO2 to leave the ocean for several reasons. Most CO2 comes from the ocean.

Has anyone looked at and critically evaluated the methods to measure CO2 levels ?

Oh yes a few have but they get trashed by the AGW believing cabal.That should make anyone suspicious.

Or is everyone accepting them as OK ?

There are a lot of skeptics out there who thinks the explanations are not adequate.A lot of cherrypicking are suspected before 1958,to make it appear that CO2 emissions are always quite smooth and slow to change.That should make you suspicious.

It is irrelevant what the atmospheric CO2 concentration is compared to any temperature measurement, because any supposed average temperature or global temperature measure is baloney anyway.

The sooner the public realise how fallacious supposed global measurement and production of trend lines is the sooner this fiasco will be over. We don’t even need to contest any scientific mechanism that causes CO2 to alter the temperature of the globe, because NO ONE (except God) knows the temperature of the globe anyway – not now, not yesterday, and certainly not tomorrow and beyond.

2010 International Climate Change Adaptation Conference
29 June – 1 July Gold Coast Convention Centre, Queensland, Australia
Co-hosted by Australia’s National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility and the CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship, this conference will be one of the first international forums to focus solely on climate impacts and adaptation. It will bring together scientists and decision makers from developed and developing countries to share research approaches, methods and results. It will explore the way forward in a world where impacts are increasingly observable and adaptation actions are increasingly required…http://www.nccarf.edu.au/conference2010

AGW is a religion. I love and respect all religions (especially the part that says don’t kill anyone who doesn’t agree with you). A lot of these people hate humanity. How can we talk them off the edge of the building. You all said don’t drink the kool-aid sooo how do we get there. The science is bare faced on our side but how do we get the kool-aid away?

Grant @ 3. I agree with you that talking of average global temperatures is nonsense.
But I was just raising the issue of the measurement of CO2 levels as a separate matter. All the concentration has been on the temp. measurement and with the AGW promoters linking it to CO2 levels, I’m asking how accurate their measurement of CO2 really is. There are so may issues around how the temps. have been measured. Are there similar issues around CO2 measurement? Sunsettommy @ 11 has answered that to some extent.

So after wasting billions of dollars, we now find out we don’t really know what the global temperature has been let alone will be doing to any acceptable degree of accuracy. The AGW alarmism will go down as both the biggest hoax and biggest scam in human history. Even if AGW is true, which is doubtful, the people who deliberately attempt to convince the world that it is true based on no real evidence belong to the same group of people who commit crimes against humanity. So, lots of people should go to jail for this, including those who should know better as we entrust them to do their job, namely the political leaders involved.

Given the preceding comments about order of accuracy of measurement, well known in the hard physical sciences that confirm calculations with in-situ experiments. I suspect that the tendency to publish temperature data to 3 decimal places is simply scientific ignorance – probably of scientists trained in the social sciences, wandering into the hard physical sciences. The appalling lack of understanding of the difference between intensive and extensive variables, the near universal use of aggregating physical measurements on the basis of imaginary spherical surfaces defined by increments of latitude and longitude, tells me that it’s technically sophisticated political advocacy, not the practice of physical science by competent scientists.

Nobel Laureat Hanne’s Alfven mentioned some time ago that the problem with modern science is too many scientists, and perhaps we can start then looking at the political philosophies which decided to move unemployable youth into the education systems to lower unemployment statistics.

And given the various essays or comments by the Marxist Ravetsky on Wattsupwiththat suggests that politics has gained control of the education system while slowly and relentlessly furthering the agenda of the progressives.

The very belief that historical data could be altered to suit present day beliefs, essentially the post modernist approach, is the problem.

For reasons I can’t really understand, most Australians seem content with the pervasive welfare state that is Australia, and maybe this social system needs to be allowed to collapse economically to then demonstrate to the people that it is the belief in the welfare state that is delusional – it’s ultimately an economically unsustainable political system.

The ETS, in that sense, apart from the shenanigans identified by Jo by the banks, is the means to fund that state. (Perhaps the banks are into the ETS purely from the POV that they expect governments to pay their debts accumulated since the start of the modern welfare state last century. Welfare statists seem intent on borrowing to fund present day expenses, sort of a perpetual Ponzi scheme. Perhaps, then, the banks have finally realised the ultimate failure of this policy, and hence their support for any ETS).

As Hayek remarked last century, the West will be slowly sliding into serfdom which, when all is said and done, is what the modern socialist state is – the post-modern feudal system.

Ha ha ha. As always. I’ll steal that one and run like a thief in the night.

Hey everyone, how is the form of the Gramscian ratbags, who have evidently promoted eachother up to the top of the CSIRO. If the Australian’s interpretation is anything to go by, these guys are saying ….. “in the last 50 years” and what they really mean is “base year 1960″

You can bet your most short-sighted retina, that 1960 was a cold year. That to me would be the most significant evidence coming out of the Australian on that score. I put forward the hypothesis that 1960 was a cold year in Australia, based on CSIRO crapola.

One of the most literally true things these dummies said is “climate change is real”

That comes across like the embarrassing stage whisper that the gorgeous, yet intellectually handicapped, blind date you’ve taken to the David Copperfield show might come out with …. you know ….. PSSST ……. ITS A TRICK.

Ok old joke. But seriously. Who are these idiots? Is it the CSIRO or the Australian?

“Climate change is real”.

We are dealing with a new level of upwardly mobile stupidity here. I’m in a good mood so right now it seems hilarious. But it can be pretty demoralizing this level of high-placed dumb. It can get you down as examples of it rain down like these cosmic rays we all hear about.

You are right of course hunter. But to my mind there is no way to wind it up except as an extension of budget-cutting. Wherein you are sacking people by the bakers dozen. And it might be you are asking them to voluntarily take three times their redundancy in a tax exemption voucher. But if these people are hanging around with a thousand dollars to our one dollar there is no way to kill this zombie and see him dead and make sure he continues to lie down. In scattered pieces.

While checking other web sites found the following quote from one M Mann:

Asked about politics, Mann shrugs.

He says he has been exasperated by the way some politicians, including Inhofe, have portrayed this winter’s snowstorms on the East Coast as undermining the case for global warming, while largely ignoring a recent announcement from NASA that the previous decade was the warmest on record.

Now unless I’ve been asleep for an extended period haven’t NASA updated their temp records for the USA and they now stand like this

As a Penn State Alum…I refused the annual fund raising phone calls asking them to call back when they fire Mann. I would like to ask all others to do the same. No matter what your feeling is on the issue science is science and playing with the facts or even the appearance of playing with the facts should be cause for dismissal.

A simple link with someone that is a scientist saying we are in an ice age, along with your definition of what an ice age is.

Easy to answer. Why wouldn’t you?

Reply Alert moderator”

See this is JH on another forum. I mean he’s a spammer. We have to assume that he’s a motivated utopian eschatologist and that the truth of falsehood or what he is about is not the least bit concerning to him.

See he wouldn’t try and scam you guys here with a tactic like this. But the less informed and more vulnerabe over at the ABC…. Well he must just consider them “the masses” and “fair game.”

here’s another site which attempts to use raw data with interesting resultshttp://justdata.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/step-by-step-debunking-climate-change/
the author is Eugene Zeien, BS Applied Physics 1991
for those of you with the skills he describes his methodology so you can check his results
quoting part of his abstract “Having heard, so frequently, that the data underlying the current consensus was robustly supportive, I decided to take the time to find raw, unadjusted data and undertake some simple analyses. I was quite surprised by the results. I am posting those here for comments and suggestions, along with source code and links to the raw data …”

The map shows reddish areas which denote the average decadal growth in mean temps of 0.3C to 0.4C.
Checking the raw data it’s interesting that most of the places that have a 1960-2009 record do not show this at all.
Rockhampton, Gladstone and Taroom (all in the warmest zone) have mean increases of 0.20C, 0.11C and 0.23C respectively.
Alice Springs, another place in the so-called hottest areas, has a decadal increase of less than 0.1C.

Also of interest is that Rockhampton’s decadal growth drops to 0.13C when compared to a period from 1940-2009.

I believe others can find more discrepancies. Surely the CSIRO can do better than this?

Frank Brown, post #14 says: “The science is bare faced on our side but how do we get the kool-aid away?”

That is indeed the big question. In my opinion the only way to get them to drop the kool-aid is to give them something else to hold. What I mean is that regardless of the facts, 95 people out of 100 will not change their mind on a subject once they have invested mental or emotional effort in it. Facts will not convince the average person of anything. That is what emotions are for. (As a side comment, let me ask “Why doesn’t voting change things?” Because voting is not designed to change things. Voting is just a way to get the masses to be emotionally invested in the process of choosing a figurehead so that they will do anything — even allow themselves to be swindled! — to keep from changing their belief that they recognize an honest politician and that they make a difference.) Anyway, the true AGW believers will not change their minds until you give them a plausible alternative narrative to tell themselves. The alternative must allow them to admit that the world is not burning up from CO2 but must do so in such a way that they still feel they did the right thing to support AGW in the first place.

Here is an example: Before the US went into Iraq in 2003, most people believed — wrongly and against all rational analysis — that Iraq had huge stocks of nerve gas, biological weapons and maybe even nuclear warheads. Most people today know there were no “weapons of mass destruction” but the only thing that allows them to admit it now is that they have a story which says “Saddam made us believe that he had WMD as a scare tactic. We just responded more powerfully than he expected, and besides, we just used the best information that was available.” Of course it is not true, but it allows people to live with themselves without admitting that they were 100% snookered because they refused to do the hard work of actually thinking

Hey! How about this? “Yes, we know for an absolute fact that CO2 WOULD be burning up the world except for one small thing. Every process that releases CO2 in substantive quantities also releases just enough particulate matter that the warming effect of CO2 is exactly counterbalanced by the cooling of the atmospheric particles. Ever notice how red the sunsets are lately? That proves what I am saying!” Of course it is wrong, it is stupid, I just made it up! Nonetheless, that is the sort of thing that AGW folks will need.

If you expect the AGW believers to put down the kool-aid, you have to give them a face saving story to cover their ignorant ego with. Sorry to phrase it that bluntly, but that is the sad fact of dealing with human belief systems.

16 March: ABC: McGauran attacks CSIRO on climate change
“Minister Carr without doubt has wandered through the CSIRO offices, intimidating the scientists and the executive to do as they’re told,” he said.
“This is now a political organisation. The executive have become compliant to the minister, utterly.”..
Mr Carr says he is outraged at the suggestion he has interfered with the CSIRO.
“There’s a group of people operating in the Senate that seem to be at the very edge of political credibility,” he said.
“They are extremists. They don’t seem to appreciate the damage they do to Australia’s reputation by seeking to undermine our great scientific institutions.
“It is an attack not just on science, it is also an attack on reason itself.”..
Meanwhile, Michael Borgas, from the CSIRO Staff Association, has rejected claims his organisation has been compromised.
“We all operate as independent scientists with high integrity,” he said.http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/16/2847627.htm?section=justin

17 March: Australian: Guy Healy: Public forum promises to cut through the fog of climate science
PETER Coaldrake has chosen a hot topic for Universities Australia’s first public forum as the peak lobby group seeks to cast off its image as a club of vice-chancellors who blow a “foghorn for funding”.
Tomorrow at a UA-hosted forum in Parliament House, Canberra, a senior scientist from the Bureau of Meteorology, Blair Trewin, will defend its century-long climate science record…
“If it’s a risk so be it,” he said. “But it’s a risk worth taking if we are interested in standing up for science and research and encouraging the next generation to take scientific careers.”..
Tomorrow’s UA forum on climate change would ventilate community concerns over the rate of Himalayan glacial melt and other errors in the case for climate change.
Fumbles by the International Panel on Climate Change, as well as the behaviour and attitudes revealed by the Climategate email affair, have weakened public confidence in the science.
Professor Coaldrake said if any frailties were found in the science, they should be addressed.
Climate scientists had a responsibility to ensure their science was “incredibly robust” to retain public confidence and attract the next generation of scientists.
The forum will tackle the certainties and uncertainties of climate change, including projections that enjoy a range of confidence.http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/public-forum-promises-to-cut-through-the-fog-of-climate-science/story-e6frgcjx-1225841566745

16 March: Politico: Lisa Lerer: Bill Clinton rallies Dems on climate bill
Former President Bill Clinton urged Senate Democrats to pass a climate bill this year during their weekly luncheon on Tuesday, arguing that legislation would spur innovation and create new jobs..
And he dismissed the idea of an energy-only bill, a proposal backed by some moderates. A cap on greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to spur new, clean energy investments and jobs, Clinton told the Democratic senators.
“He was very strong about it and that we need to price carbon in the effort to get the money flowing to help to transform the economy,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). “I thought he spoke very strongly.”
Kerry is working Lieberman and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on a revamped version of the climate bill that they hope to release by the end of the month. In hopes of attracting bipartisan support, the three lawmakers plan to include several proposals traditionally backed by Republicans like expanding nuclear power and offshore drilling…http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34523.html

Bloody bloody bloody. I saw someone called “watching the deniers” come here and link. So of course I went to his place and started swearing at him. He has all these threads abusive of Joanne and Richard.

Then I get to his “about” page and we find out he’s a complete fake:

“Like many, I’ve watched the climate debate in the popular press with dismay. I trust the experts in the field – climate scientists – have got it right…”

TRUST!!! I sez. What a phoney. What a complete tosser. I’m not particularly creative when I swear at tossers like this fellow. I just use the same swear-words many times over.

I also want to make it clear to that liar Clive that its not co-ordinated. Its just me. Stupid communist. Peter Garret wannabe.

Gerard H: @39
You might notice my moderated post on that thread at #9 – I had the temerity to question Quiggin’s credibility after the baseless claims against McIntyre. Needless to say Tim decided to moderate that comment out of existance as “off topic” despite 2 references to Quiggin in his original post.

Only 4 posts later you see someone coming out of left field and talking about Dawkins … now that is on topic…

So when I pointed out this “even handed moderating” in a later post it didn’t even make the board as “off topic.” Lambert is a joke … he debates politely when in the public eye (as against monckton) but as soon as he is detached from reality behind the keyboard he goes way off the reservation. It is interesting how people’s personality changes when they are no longer infront of the individual they are talking about. I guess the potential threat of copping one in the chops (of more likely a supersonic wedgie in the case of IT nerd Lambert) brings out more civility.

I observe that most of those in favour of the CPRS legislation haven’t even given the text of it a cursory glance. The voting public needs to talk to their federal member and senators and ask them if they read and understand the Bills for which they vote.

There is well over 100 pages in the CPRS package of Bills. And they changed substantially in the week before the vote in the Senate. The Bill changed between being passed in the Reps and a vote being taken in the Senate.

When Bills are passed; they become Law. If ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it; then certainly ignorance of the Bills is no justification for passing it.

They objected to ‘denialists’ so I chose ‘delusionists’, which I’ve used for some years now. And if, as you admit, they are crazy, why shouldn’t I say so? I’m certainly not going to allow the term ‘sceptic’ to apply to gullible fools who swallow the kind of nonsense Lindzen puts out here because it suits their wishful thinking.

and

@Rich Puchalsky – Bought and paid for is the default hypothesis with these guys e.g. Balling, Goklany, Michaels. So, I don’t think it’s OTT to assume this wrt Lindzen.

But the evidence for this in Lindzen’s case is actually fairly thin – Ross Gelbspan said he got some money from Western Fuels back in the 90s, but it wasn’t much and could have been seen as a misjudgement.

My diagnosis (as in the post) is that he’s an irresponsible contrarian (he denies the health risks of smoking, and makes a point of smoking during interviews) who has painted himself into a corner.

and in case you didn’t see the ad hom the first time:

Just a reminder which will no doubt reinforce opinions on both sides of the debate as regards Lindzen’s capacity for statistical reasoning. He’s also a ‘sceptic’ regarding the health risks of smoking and acts on his views.

I am toying with replacing Gavin at RC with Quiggin for my daily funnies… decisions, decisions…

I think you’ll find that it was when a scientist of peerless reputation and a mind uncluttered by ideological passion took over GISS that the decline was found to be false;

“The basic GISS temperature analysis scheme was defined in the late 1970s by James Hansen when a method of estimating global temperature change was needed for comparison with one-dimensional global climate models. Prior temperature analyses, most notably those of Murray Mitchell, covered only 20-90°N latitudes. Our rationale was that the number of Southern Hemisphere stations was sufficient for a meaningful estimate of global temperature change, because temperature anomalies and trends are highly correlated over substantial geographical distances. Our first published results (Hansen et al. 1981) showed that, contrary to impressions from northern latitudes, global cooling after 1940 was small, and there was net global warming of about 0.4°C between the 1880s and 1970s.”

Here’s a climate snapshot from the CSIRO and the ABOM. No surprises just solidarity with the party.
I’m sure you’ve heard about the latest CSIRO and BOM relesse “It is very likely that human activities have caused most of the global warming observed since 1950
There is greater than 90% certainty that increases in greenhouse gas emissions have caused most of the global
warming since the mid-20th century. International research shows that it is extremely unlikely that the observed
warming could be explained by natural causes alone. Evidence of human influence has been detected in ocean
warming, sea-level rise, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns. CSIRO
research has shown that higher greenhouse gas levels are likely to have caused about half of the winter rainfall
reduction in south-west Western Australia.”http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20100315.shtmlhttp://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20100315a.pdf
I’d like to make a FOI request to both the CSIRO and BOM
there are a number of you who are more expert than I am; what should I ask for so that their data can be checked by enthusiastic amateurs

Easiest way to get the questions framed is to contact Warwick Hughes in Canberra http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/ Warwick might be doing the analysis of the CSIRO-BOM issue right now. Also David Stockwell could be contacted as well.

thanks Louis; I’ve put a comment on Warwick Hughes blog but don’t have his e mail address; do you?
I have read on Warwick’s blog that he doesn’t agree with BOM’s stroking and tweaking or homogenising data so not sure whether there is any raw data for anyone to work with but at least he would know how to frame sensible questions about that
and I’ve posted a comment on the niche modelling blog; that’s the only way I know of getting in touch with David Stockwell
any other suggestions would be gratefully received as well

Lambert is the most dishonest and disgraceful liar on ozblogs. He has serious self esteem issues that he needs to deal with possibly brought on by his height disadvantage relative to other men. He’s a hobbit with attitude.

I wish to beg your collective indulgence, for I have just had a flash of the blindingly obvious, better late than never I suppose, and would appreciate some honest feedback.

If I understand it correctly, all of the discussion of the temperature records are based on surface station readings, hence the SS at the end of many of the series names. More specifically, these are land-based surface stations. To the extent historical proxies are used, these are also land-based proxies, i.e. tree rings, with the exception of some ice cores in arctic/antarctic.

Yet some two-thirds or so of the Earth’s surface is liquid water, and hence there is no temperature history for it, other than the quite recent satellite record. So how exactly do we have a global surface temperature record when all we have are guesstimates for some 30% of said surface? That’s without getting into the data quality and ‘manipulation’ issues we face with the surface station record.

I mean the LIA gets disparaged as a Northern Hemisphere phenomenon, not to be taken into account when looking at the global climate record. Yet last I checked the Northern Hemisphere should make up about 50% of the Earth’s surface. In other words, the same group of charlatans climate scientists who deride a phenomenon because it may have only covered half of the world are basing their snake-oil sales projections climate forecasts on a record covering less than a third of the world.

Paul, that is an excellent observation (made before) but worth repeating. I can add to that another question which would note that the ocean is substantial in volume so how does one measure it’s temperature? (which of course they claim is rising). Further how does one measure and quantify the temperature of the entire atmosphere? That is to say even IF surface temps. have risen how do we know that the ENTIRE atmosphere is warmer. Remember that the surface sensors are for the most part about 1.5 meters off the ground. Maybe just 2 meters higher would show something entirely different.

Thanks Mark, for your reply and the additional points. Lately I’ve been wondering, what if I put up several temperature readers around my house, front yard back yard, ground level and second floor? Obviously the temperatures would all be a bit different, but I’d be curious to see how precisely the trends matched at the different locations.

I could just use thermometers and take hand reading, but I’d like to have accurate (to perhaps a decimal point or two) readings and to remove the human error part (which, as it’s me, would be significant), does anyone know of an inexpensive yet relatively accurate automated system?

OMG has anyone here read any of the Centre of Inquiry website ? I was recommended to it as a Skeptic web site but I have just read a few threads on AGW and it has been completely taken over by the AGW religion. I just listened to their “Point of Inquiry” Podcast and the host (Chris Mooney) refers to skeptics as ‘anti-science’ and uses this podcast to give the AGW scientists such as Michael Mann a platform to insult and smear skeptical opponents.
It looks like this ‘center of inquiry’ has abandoned inquiry and adopted a new religion, like the host Mooney who has been involved with and received a fellowship from the religion-based-science organisation the John Templeton Foundation.

Paul, if you search using the terms USB logging thermometer you’ll see some devices that could do what you want. I suggest that you might save time and money by recognizing that; yes you will see differences from north and south exposures, probably a “phase shift” east and west due to the sun, and in the end no significant help in the quest for a definitive answer to all these site and surface questions.

I have been thinking for a long time that a very good potential source of atmospheric temperature readings could be easily collected and logged from airliners.

Of course that would mean someone would want a new data set to chew on.

There is lot of data on the BOM’s own website but there are discrepancies between the raw data and the ‘homogenized’ data which the trend graphs use. I ran the raw data for some locations which show up on the CSIRO statement you mention and found discrepancies (see @ 28).
As Louis says, Warwick Hughes has done much work on temperature adjustment over the years and is probably working on this statement now.

“A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and atmospheric administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the northern hemisphere between 1945 and 1968.”

Surely that is evidence that there was indeed a significant cooling trend ongoing and that it continued for a few more years after 1968.

I have an old copy of Encyclopaedia Brittanica from 1974. I checked and sure enough it has temperature graphs 1880 to 1960 broken up by latitude. Each one shows a decline around 1/2 degree F from 1950 to 1960. Posted it here:

Do current or historic temperatures inform us about future temperatures? No

We can see that given the uncertainty about what the current temperature is over a wide area and through a range of altitudes, that historic or current temperature is not a good indicator of future temperature.

Can CO2 concentration or projected concentrations of atmospheric CO2 inform us about future temperature? Probably less accurately than current or historic temperature.

think i messed up posting on this “study” earlier, but have found an interesting followup:

17 March: Austn Climate Madness: Butterfly study hijacked by AGW
Why would they interview Karoly? So I did a bit of research, and tracked down the original home page at Monash for the study here. Firstly, it should be noted that this is a research project within the school of Biosciences (not Earth Sciences or Climate Change) and there is no mention of Karoly as part of the project…
Again, no mention of anthropogenic climate change or greenhouse gases or carbon dioxide (or Karoly). They are simply looking at how butterflies react to increasing temperatures – you only need to read the PDF to see that…
Suddenly there is a “final step”, oddly not mentioned in any of the project’s earlier documentation, where Karoly steps in and neatly links the whole thing to human caused climate change:
-The final step taken by the researchers was to link the regional temperature changes with human-induced global warming.
Team member [since when? - Ed] climatologist, Professor David Karoly applied global circulation models to the Melbourne region, taking into account local factors that influence climate.
This suggested that the regional temperature changes observed over the decade were unlikely to be observed without the influence of human greenhouse emissions, says Kearney.-…http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/?p=3444

Do yourself a favour and read the 2009 paper by Peterson “THE MYTH OF THE 1970S GLOBAL COOLING SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS” the mitchell study is mentioned in there and yes it showed cooling, from about the 40′s. You will also see that it was only for the Northern Hempisphere, and the Southern hemisphere was warming.

Now it also goes on to explain a few others things you might find interesing.

I assume you do want to know about these things rather than ignore them.

Its just more nonsense Post Hoc. It wasn’t a myth at all. I’m old enough to remember. Not only is the prospect of cooling not a myth. Its still the current scientific understanding. Nothing has changed since the 1970′s in reality. A cult movement has developed. But the cult movement is science fraud and not science.

We knew we were heading for a glacial period then, and we know that we are heading for a glacial period now. The global warming cult is not a scientific movement. But the knowledge that we are in an ice age, and have glacial and inter-glacial theories within that ice age, never changed, never went away, was here in the 1970′s and is still what the scientific evidence tells us now.

Holton that graph is bound to be just lies. We would want it audited. I shouldn’t be surprised if they just took it from Goddard. Thats how shonky this movement is. What have they said about the heat island effect, and how they dealt with it? If they are not willing to say how they dealt with the heat island effect, then that itself is pretty disgraceful.

Well yes. Of course its lying. Because the face is we knew then that we are in an ice age, and that ice ages are split into glacial and interglacial periods. And that is still what we know now. So of course its lying if its claiming that this is and was a myth.

Are you claiming that we are NOT in an ice age. That our ice age does not consist of glacial and interglacial periods? Are you claiming that the Peterson study makes this claim? Are you claiming that this WAS NOT the understanding in the 1970′s?

Anyone who says any of these things is lying. On the other hand I suspect you are running a dishonest bait and switch. But in the 1970′s this was the understanding. And this is the understanding now.

Right I get it now. Its a Southern Hemisphere graph. The Australian Bureau Of Meteorology did not have the resources to put this graph together with its own domestically resourced data-gathering. This is clearly some sort of rigup that they are sourcing from one of the known fraudulent data-riggers. Heads ought to roll.

It’s always amused me to hear alarmists explain away the 70′s “Coming Ice Age” scare.
The line is, “It was never a consensus.” and “It was only the northern hemisphere.”

Funny when you think about the current warming scare. There is NO consensus, and the warming is largely contained in the northern hemisphere.

And as an aside, thinking about what really got the alarmists going, the infamous “hockey schtick” that purportedly showed the 20thC warming as UNPRECEDENTED, was constructed by using a small number of tree stumps dug out of bogs in the northern hemisphere high latitudes.

I understand how you guys work now, you assume all scientist are wrong, and in fact you guys no more than they do, talk about hubris.

You got the first part correct. You MUST assume scientists are wrong until empirical evidence is shown and the falsification test is done. Otherwise it’s not science.
As to the 2nd part, hubris, I’ll give you an example of hubris. “We will limit the global T rise to 2DegC.” NOW THAT’S HUBRIS

Actually Baa Humbug that is not Science, assuming something is wrong is actually putting a bias into your result.

You confuse what a null hypothesis really is.

Graeme

I showed you some evidence from a Scientific paper which you ignored, and in fact called them liars. To my mind that is not looking at the evidence, rather it is assuming you have the evidence and everyone else is wrong. Hubris.

You do understand the difference between pseudoscience and science, don’t you?

Pseudoscience happens when the scientific method is used to deduce testable outcomes from a prior agreed to belief. AGW is a belief that something might happen to the earth in the future based on present day human activities.

That belief is not within the realm of science since

1. There are no data since those are in the future.
2. Not having any data means not being able to frame an hypothesis

But predicting a future calamity from present human behaviour is simply witchdoctery, ruses that the unelected priesthood use to maintain their authority and funding.

Lets get this right post hoc. The science says that we are in an interglacial. That interglacials don’t last long in comparison with glacial periods. That we have to expect that we may be near the end of this interglacial. That since about 5000 years ago we have been on a cooling trend. An up and down lumpy cooling trend but a cooling trend just the same.

Now the science said this in the 1970′s and it still says this now? So it doesn’t really matter in the slightest what your study claims. It doesn’t have any evidence against the above. This was the understanding in the 1970′s. And if it makes claims that this wasn’t the understanding in the 1970′s it is lying. Now I don’t know whether the study is lying. But its certainly lying if it contradicts anything I say right here in this post.

Strawman argument, AGW is more than future predictions it is based on present and past data (ie data we have measured and observed. It is also based on known principles of Physics and Chemistry, ie CO2 has an atmospheric warming property.

Therefore we have sound scientific principles brought about by experiment and observation.

1) CO2 warms the atmosphere
2) We are increasing CO2 into the atmosphere.

Therefore CO2 has the potential to cause climate change.

Now measuring temperature over a period of time (direct and proxy) shows how the temperature changes.

These observations show temperature to be increasing.

What other explanations could there be, Solar, Core, etc etc. Examine those, do these other issues provide the amount of warming that we are currently onserving. Yes or No, if Yes then new Thoery, if No the AGW from CO2 increase holds.

So far the majority of evidence points to CO2.

That is all scientific, what you are complaining about is the modeling, which is different.

But again based on scientific principles, a warming globe will have various effects, etc etc etc.

By her picture, JoNova is not old enough to remember the “New Ice Age” controversy in the 60-70′s.
Well, I am. Don’t let the young’uns fool you. It was quite pervasive. Politicians and TV personalities and even people (;-)) were convinced of the reality that we were entering a New Ice Age(NIA). Novels and short stories of the NIA were written by some of the most recognized talents of the day (Arthur C. Clark, e.g.).
It was perhaps a greater mass delusion than AGW. The difference was that we never imagined we could do anything about it except buy more appropriate winter clothes.

“What other explanations could there be, Solar, Core, etc etc. Examine those, do these other issues provide the amount of warming that we are currently onserving. Yes or No, if Yes then new Thoery, if No the AGW from CO2 increase holds.”

There is a fairly obvious explanation for the observed temperature rise and fall – it’s explained in terms of the Plamsa Model in which the earth is regarded as an electrically charged sphere, (behaving as a leaky electrical capacitor) in intimate electrical connection with the plasma of the solar system and the galaxy.

(As an aside the rise and fall in temperature you obsess over is in magntitude a tenth of a degree Celsius, but you seem to have no difficulty coping with a diurnal change in temperature an order of magnitude greater).

The irradiance Earth gets from the Sun is only part of the energy it gets – the rest comes via the now recognised magnetic flux tubes currently being delineated by NASA’s THEMIS mission. We also now know that the Earth’s polar regions receieve millions of amperes of electric currents which, when the current density increases, causes the polar auroras to flare.

The following temperature profile of the Earth’s surface up to ~ 500km is not the profile expected for a black body,

WeestHoustonGeo:
March 18th, 2010 at 11:51 am
By her picture, JoNova is not old enough to remember the “New Ice Age” controversy in the 60-70’s.
Well, I am.
>>

Me too. I remember the panic in my high school. People crying, all kinds of craziness. Even discussion of war breaking out if the United States wouldn’t allow an influx of people from Canada.

The 1974 Encyclopaedia Brittanica I still have not only has temperature graphs to 1960 that agree with the National Geographic graph (see my link in an earlier comment this thread). The same volume has extensive discussion of the “current cooling trend) in several articles.

Quoting: 90davidmhoffer:
“Me too. I remember the panic in my high school. People crying, all kinds of crazi=s. Even discussion of war breaking out if the United States wouldn’t allow an influx of people from Canada.”
Commenting:
You must be further North. It was more of a welcome change sort of thing here in the Texas heat. That would be a lot like your Minnesotans For Global Warming (M4GW), today. Please see link.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJUFTm6cJXM&NR=1

No it doesn’t in fact this is the whole point they have nothing but corrupt useless models with garbage data points that show CO2 causes Temp increases.

In fact there is more evidence that CO2 rise follows temp increases.

Although I am happy for you to point me at some scientific evidence that CO2 causes temp rises of the order the AGW religion are predicting. That evidence does not include the current IPCC referenced models that have got the forcings wrong. So no fudge factor forcings unless you can empirically back them up!!

WOW…take a look at what I just read. Its one of the first times I;ve seen so open confirmation that the populace has been bombarded with propaganda.
“Climate ads banned for overstating threat”
LONDON: Britain’s advertising
watchdog has banned two government
advertisements for
overstating the threat from climate
change.
The ads used nursery rhymes
including Jack andJill to highlight
the impact of global warming, but
the Advertising Standards Authority
said yesterday that they
exaggerated the risk.
“Jack and Jill went up the hill to
fetch a pail of water. There was
none as extreme weather due to
climate change had caused a
drought,” read the copyline on
one of the ads. “Extreme weather
conditions such as flooding, heatwaves
and storms will become
more frequent and intense,”
warned the ad, commissioned by
the Department of Energy and
Climate Change.
The second ad read: “Rub-adub-
dub, three men in a tub a
necessary course of action due to
flash tlooding caused by climate
change.”
“Climate change is happening.
Temperature and sea levels are
rising. Extreme weather events
such as storms, floods and heatwaves
will become more frequent
and intense,” it said.
And it warned: “If we carry on
at this rate, life in 25 years could
be very different.”
The ads were part of a DECC
campaign that attracted 939 complaints
last year. Upholding the
complaints, the ASA said forecasts
by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change “involved
uncertainties” the adverts
failed to reflect.
Energy and Climate Change
Secretary Ed Miliband downplayed
the problem raised by the
ASA.
“The science tells us that it is
more than 90 per cent likely that
there will be more extreme
weather events if we don’t act,” he
said. “In any future campaign, as
requested by the ASA, we will
make clear the nature of this prediction.
We will continue to provide
public information about the
dangers of climate change”.
AFP

Quoting: 95davidmhoffer:
“I’m in Canada in a city named Winnipeg, and fondly referred to as Winterpeg. We don’t have warmists and skeptics here. Just optimists and pessimists.”
Commenting:
Been to Calgary and Atikoken, Ontario (both in the summer). I can see where Winnipeg could find an Ice Age to be Serious Business! Truth is, we are getting more cold weather these days. I had a banana tree in the backyard for about 12 years and it was toast after our December 4 snow and hard freeze (without president!).
So, best keep an eye out, up there, and look me up if you find yourself as a refugee.

Therefore we have sound scientific principles brought about by experiment and observation.

1) CO2 warms the atmosphere
2) We are increasing CO2 into the atmosphere.

Therefore CO2 has the potential to cause climate change.

Post Hoc, have you heard of “Cargo Cult Mentality”? A phrase coined by Richard Feynman. Below is Feynmans explanation of good scientific practice.

“Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

Is it worthwhile to get into a debate about the current climate science and how it fits in with the above explanation of good scientific practice?
If so, then please first click on THIS LINK, have a read and come back here for a debate, OK?

John: And I can assure the public that this government has learnt from the mistakes of the past…

Bryan: Your mistakes.

John: The mistakes of the past, Bryan. And future initiatives will be shining models of efficiency and sound management. Even as we speak, this government is embarking on an extensive research into its next grand environmental initiative.

Bryan: I don’t believe you.

John: Ridgey didgey Bryan – look! [Opens briefcase, pulls out large black and yellow book - “Nuclear Reactors at Home for Dummies”.]

—————————————————————–
Author’s note: Actually, I’m not anti-nuclear. It’s just that if the greenies can’t get their fuzzy little heads around technology as simple as roof insulation, it beggars belief when they promise to deliver a “green sustainable and economic” future using some solar cells and a windmill. You just know it’s going to end in tears.

Post Hoc – sorry but you have a fair bit of it wrong, and so does the IPCC. CO2 does not warm anything! CO2 TRANSFERS energy. It does not store or create energy. It transfers long-wave radiation at about 14 microns (based on my basic understanding) and transfers it to other molecules whereby it eventually returns to the Earth’s surface, and some is transferred back into space. The first 50ppm is responsible for about 80% of this process and after about 250ppm any additional CO2 cannot do its job as the first 250ppm of CO2 is doing all the energy transfer it can at that wavelength.

The CO2 relationship between energy transfer is logarithmic not linear. The IPCC and its modellers have introduced ‘Kindergarten science’ to its position – this incorrect assumption that there is a linear relationship between temperature and energy transfer leading to a change in temperatures. All very simple, but all very wrong.

I am an environmental scientist, and not an atmospheric physicist, but this is my understanding of the climate system. All you need to do is to have an understanding of scientific principle and the need for observational evidence and you’ll see that the whole notion of CO2 being a primary driver of climate is impossible.

The fallacy of this linear assumption by the IPCC is confirmed irrefutably by comparing CO2 concentrations (see Manua Loa Observatory data) and outgoing long-wave radiation (see NOAA satellite data). There is no correlation at all. For the Carbonologists to be correct, as CO2 increases, OLR should decrease. What we’re seeing is actually the opposite!

So not only does basic thermodynamic principles discount the CO2 theory, actual observational evidence also does!!

CO2 is a climate indicator, its not a climate maker.

Where does most of the energy come from? The Sun.

After assessing and measuring the influence of the solar cycle duration, the Ap Index (solar magnetism), solar cycle amplitude (max. Wolf number in a cycle) as well as Total Solar Irradiance vs. global temperatures, CO2 becomes absolutely inconsequential.

Solar Cycles 18, 19, 21, 22 all had very high irradiance levels and high max. Wolf numbers. (SC 20 was rather quiet – which coincided with a decline in temps in the 60s and early 70s). The period from 1950-2000 was the most intense solar period we’ve seen since the 1200s. The evidence is in the Be10 and C14 records in the soil profile. Combine this with three consecutive short minima, it is little wonder we’ve seen a 30-40 years of increased temperatures. Then allowing for lag time (as one would expect in a massive energy transfer system, as our atmosphere is), the influence of solar activity on global temperatures is overwhelming.

The notion that CO2 is a primary driver of climate is dead. Game over.

The IPCC actually does use the logarithmic relationship of CO2 to LWR in their working group and technical summary calculations, but they “insinuate” a linear relationship in all their alarmism and “for the layman” papers like the summary for policy makers.

p.s. I love the CARBONOLOGISTS quip. May I use slightly adjusted versions, CARBOGARBOLOGISTS and CLIMAGARBOLOGISTS with your permission? lmao

Wow! I’m glad that I found your site. I’m enjoying the discussion of the science within the real world context of the politics and money that are driving it. These types of discussions, where you are allowed to connect the dots, are forbidden at some of the more ‘enlightened’ sites here in the US. They’ve got moderators who specialize in questioning your intelligence, changing the subject or deleting posts that don’t fit their model.

My interest was piqued by the earlier comments relevant to the ‘consensus’ views on the history of the measurement of atmospheric CO2 concentration. I find it interesting that they are willing to selectively disregard the results of quantitative wet chemical analyses as unreliable, while relying on the cheaper indirect (infra-red) measurments that are subject to interference from other atmospheric constituents. Could it be that it is easier to work with data that requires ‘adjustments’ so that there is a good excuse for not reporting the raw data? Why is it that Keeling is revered with almost near-deity status and remains almost unquestioned? I’d like to see more inquiry into the details of this keystone of the AGW belief system!

Baa Humbug – not a problem. More than happy for you to use the ‘term’.

The other one Im starting to use is CLIMA-CHONDRIACS. Any little isolated weather incident is suddenly confirmation for momentus climatic changes and proof of AGW. Like a hypochondriact who sneezes and thinks he or she has a terminal illness.

Point noted re. logarithmic, but from what I can see the saturation properties of atmospheric CO2 is not really discussed in 4AR from what I can see (havent re-read the report for a couple of years though). The other one I have problems with is the CO2 residence time assumed by the IPCC modelling. Up to ten times what the majority of atmospheric scientists have determined.

I also love it when the Greenies (not looking at anyone in this blog) raise the issue of nuclear power and the danger to humans. It is the safest source of electricity utilised to date. For a few recent statistics see the table on p21 of:

Post Hoc – you remind me of paddy with your belief in the power of CO2.

here’s Paddy’s story.

Some years ago, in a small coastal Irish community, Paddy married a woman, Maggie, half his age, All was well at first until Maggie took delivery of a ‘woman’s’ magazine and began to read things about sex. It soon became clear that she had never climaxed during sex and, according to her Grandmother, all Irish women are entitled to a climax once in a while..
To resolve the problem, Paddy and Maggie went to see the Veterinarian since there was no doctor within thirty miles who could be relied upon not to gossip.
However, the Vet didn’t have a clue, but he did recall how, during hot summers, his mother and father would fan a cow (with a big towel) that was having difficulty breeding. Apparently, this cooled her down and helped her to relax. So he recommended they hire a strong, virile young man to wave a big towel over them while they were having sex. This, the Vet said, should cause the young wife to cool down, relax and possibly achieve the sought after climax.
So the couple hired a strong young man from Dublin to wave a huge bath towel over them as the Vet suggested.
After many efforts, Maggie still had not climaxed so they went back to the Vet who suggested she change partners and let the young man have a go while Paddy waved the big towel.
They tried it that night and Maggie went into wild, screaming, ear-splitting climaxes, one right after the other for about two and a half hours.
When it was over, Paddy looked down at the exhausted young man and in a boasting voice shouted, “And that, me auld son, is how ya wave a feckin’ towel”

Whilst working on another AGW matter I came across the following. Thought it would be of interest.

Validating and Understanding Water Vapor and Cloud Feedbacks in Climate Models

De-Zheng Sun, CIRES/Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO

The water vapor and cloud feedbacks in 5 state-of-the-art atmospheric general circulation models have been quantified using the ENSO signal. These models include the NCAR CAM1,CAM2, the GFDL AM2p10, the NASA NSIIP model, and the Hadley Centre Model. The water vapor feedback remains to be the feedback that vary least among the models. All models appear to overestimate somewhat the water vapor feedback. (The overestimate of the water vapor feedback ranges from 20–50%) The feedback varies most among models is the feedback from the short-wave cloud forcing. With the exception of the GFDL AM2, all models underestimate the strength of the negative feedback from the short-wave forcing of clouds, though the degree of the underestimate varies greatly. The estimate of the feedback from the long-wave forcing of clouds also vary widely among models. The GFDL AM2 stands out as the model that has the best simulation of the water vapor and cloud feedbacks. These results highlight that simulating the water vapor and cloud feedbacks by GCMs remains a problem to be solved. The results also suggest understanding the inter-model differences in the simulation of these feedbacks could lead to considerable insight into the nature of the problem.

Here is another from the same conference of the paper above in #107
Those of you from Europe will remember the flood of alarmism during the 2003 heatwave.
This IPCC author presented the following paper to the conference in 2005, yet the IPCC still mentioned the 2003 heatwave in the context of AGW in the 2007 AR4.

Heat-waves are a familiar feature of the Mediterranean summer. Several anomalous warm summers occurred in the Mediterranean and southern Europe in the last 30 years, with heat-wave events of different intensity and length. However, the heat-wave occurred in 2003 (the most extreme in 500 years) was the longest and warmest event occurred, with more than 30,000 fatalities in Western Europe, and it has been viewed by some Authors as part of the expected global signal of warming. It is arguable that resulted from a direct of lower tropospheric global warming, or more likely, it has been a regional climate event. In an attempt to support this last hypothesis, we examine the recent 30 summers in the Mediterranean and south Europe region.

The authors conclude with the following..

Analysis and model results show that heat waves in western Europe and Mediterranean are regional climate fluctuation, weakly linked to large scale climate events, as monsoons and SSTAs, rather than a direct result of lower tropospheric global warming, which, however, may play a role in enhancing their strength.

Anyone see this paper bandied about? If it doesn’t fit the AGW meme, it doesn’t exist. Does it post hoc?

Post hoc:
March 18th, 2010 at 11:28 am
AGW is more than future predictions it is based on present and past data (ie data we have measured and observed…

The geological record contradicts your claim. Moreover, the data utilized by NOAA/GISS/NCDC is corrupt and fraudulently altered. The raw data shows little or no increase in temperatures whereas the adjusted data shows a much larger increase. If the data is being adjusted to account for the UHIE the temperature data should be adjusted downward, not upward.

You wrote, “1) CO2 warms the atmosphere 2) We are increasing CO2 into the atmosphere”

You failed to mention that the effects of CO2 are logarithmic and that the IPCC posits a positive feedback from water vapor. This feedback has not been proven. therefore, the rest of your analogy is irrelevant.

You also wrote at # 82 “These observations show temperature to be increasing.”
And at # 83 “Please cite your evidence for the fact that we are currently in a cooling trend. 5000 year scale and say 200 year scale or 70 year scale.”

They are finding viking corpses below the permafrost in Greenland, evidence of medieval civilization in the Alps as the snow and glaciers melt and the route taken by Hannibal through the Alps to invade Italy is impassible by mountaineers using the latest high tech gear. Simple observational proof. Mann’s hockey stick (MBH98) has been thoroughly debunked and the MWP has been “rehabilitated” and was, indeed, global.

At #82 you accuse Louis of using a straw man.

Yet,
Post hoc:
March 18th, 2010 at 10:10 am
I understand how you guys work now, you assume all scientist are wrong, and in fact you guys no more than they do, talk about hubris.

Nobody said all scientists are wrong! Now that is a straw man and evidence that your claim against Louis for employing a straw man is hypocritical!

“you’ll see that the whole notion of CO2 being a primary driver of climate is impossible.”‘
‘
No one actually claims that? Why do you say they do?

As for OLR you mean the Harries2001 study which showed a reduction in OLR in the bandwidths of CO2 over the years 1960 to 1996?

Doest that refute what you just said.

So how about citing some scientific studies to back up what you claim? oh I forgot that is not what you do.

Eddy Aruda

So Vikings in Greenland is that 5000 years or 200 or 70 yrs ago? The answer of course is none, so again please cite some scientific evidence to show we are as you claim in a cooling trend. By scientific evidence I mean a peer reviewed paper

MattB:
March 18th, 2010 at 12:29 am
Gerard H – you need to re-read the editorial.

I read the editorial by Deltoid. Is Deltoid Aussie slang for hemorrhoid because he is definitely a pain in the arse. Deltarrhoid wrote, “And sure enough their editorial responds by calling Quiggin a “green activist” with a “totalitarian mindset”.

Actually, what the Australian wrote was, “Yesterday, for example, as an opinion writer in a financial tabloid claimed erroneously that The Australian campaigned against science, the lead author on our commentary page was none other than James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who is known to some as the “father of climate change”. The prominent publication of Hansen’s views was consistent with The Australian’s policy of encouraging vigorous and informed debate. The only bias should be towards intelligent discussion. Such plurality, however, grates on the totalitarian mindset of some green activists.”

That was the link provided by deltarrhoid in his blog. So, Matt, maybe I missed something and you can enlighten me a little further? I hope you haven’t put your foot in your mouth, again! Do you need me to mail you a shoehorn?

You all realise it took more than 24 hours from Joe’s post, to (post hoc) first appeared on site. Give credit it must have taken some time to find any study that suggested the 1940′s to 70′s cooling was not global

Post hoc:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
So Vikings in Greenland is that 5000 years or 200 or 70 yrs ago? The answer of course is none, so again please cite some scientific evidence to show we are as you claim in a cooling trend. By scientific evidence I mean a peer reviewed paper.

Also, http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html for a graph of the last several hundreds of millions of years. Why you are hung up on 5000, 200 or 70 is difficult to fathom. The AGW proponents use the year 1850 as their stating point because it was the end of the little ice age. This is a blatant use of an endpoint fallacy. The world was warmer during the MWP, the Roman warm period and the holocene maximum during the bronze age.

The fourth assessment report airbrushed out the MBH 98 after the hockey stick was thoroughly debunked (see Wegman Report) Did the IPCC have it right in their first assessment report or have they been wrong in all of them?

The geological record shows no correlation between temps and CO2 for the last 650,000,000 years. Zip, zilch, nada. The IPCC based its claim for the recent warming as being unprecedented primarily on MBH 98. Can you cite evidence to show that the warming as of late was anything but a natural variation?

“That since about 5000 years ago we have been on a cooling trend. An up and down lumpy cooling trend but a cooling trend just the same.” So I was doing something that was unique to you guys I was answering a persons question.

As far as I can tell your link is to this website, so not really a peer reviewed paper now is so how about I skip reading the propaganda

Not really sure how a graph showing scales of several millions years will help with the Vikings in Greenland, so more avoidance.

BTW Can you please show Scientific evidence for this debunking of the “hockey stick” graph. If I understand it right, the graph has been reproduced with different data and using different proxies and they show similar results, hardly debunking.

But I ask again how about some Scientific Papers. NOT propaganda.

So have you read Petersen yet? You know a proper scientific paper, you never know you might learn something.

I am happy to debate science with you, but so far I haven’t seen any science from you guys it appears to be all propaganda.

BTW Can you please show Scientific evidence for this debunking of the “hockey stick” graph. If I understand it right, the graph has been reproduced with different data and using different proxies and they show similar results, hardly debunking.

Your correct it has been reproduced by passing random data throught their calculations and coming up with a similar result.

So what does that mean Ad hoc -hmmm that their calculations will generate a hocky stick no matter what data is fed into it.

Steve and I showed that the mathematics behind the Mann Hockey Stick were badly flawed, such that its shape was determined by suspect bristlecone tree ring data. Controversies quickly piled up: Two expert panels involving the U.S. National Academy of Sciences were asked to investigate, the U.S. Congress held a hearing, and the media followed the story around the world.

The expert reports upheld all of our criticisms of the Mann Hockey Stick, both of the mathematics and of its reliance on flawed bristlecone pine data. One of the panels, however, argued that while the Mann Hockey Stick itself was flawed, a series of other studies published since 1998 had similar shapes, thus providing support for the view that the late 20th century is unusually warm. The IPCC also made this argument in its 2007 report. But the second expert panel, led by statistician Edward Wegman, pointed out that the other studies are not independent. They are written by the same small circle of authors, only the names are in different orders, and they reuse the same few data climate proxy series over and over.

So Bob no Scientific data, rather a political review byt the US congress. If McKiitrick was so correct why hasn’t he published his findings in a peer reviewed paper? Because he has no SCIENTIFIC basis.

You want to argue against the science but you refuse to use science, and yet you call yourselves sceptics, your nothing of the sort. If you want to argue Science, then present me with Science and not BLOGS.

Is this the same Wegman that has been exposed as being coached by a Republican aid and didn’t even consult Mann when testifying before the hearings, yet was in constant contact with McIiintock, couldn’t be him could it?

The rise of Hollywood blockbusters movies in the 80′s right through until today correlate with the urgency of climate change fiction dreamed up by underachieving scientists of that generation. Michael Mann, James Hansen are on the Titanic, at the bow, starlet in hand, knowing it is all coming to an end, but their hearts must go on. How heroic?

And the science to back up that comment? Or don’t you guys do Science, like I said at the start Hubris, you actually believe your own crap don’t you. You guys actually believe that you know more than the scientist on this issue.

How sad, you don’t even realise your sheep, you merely mouth what is told to you, with no critical thinking.
den*****ist {Warning once do not use that word again ED]
My coming here was a little experiment for myself, I typed The title of this blog into Google, “hide the decline…..” and found about a dozen sites all saying exactly the same thing, at exactly the same time. You are carbon copies from central casting, it is hilarious.

[use of that word here is about the only thing that gets you moderated. ED]

Post Hoc. You should know that ‘peer-review’ does not mean correct. Peer-review means (or should mean) not deeply flawed.

In this instance I don’t need peer-reviewed literature anyhow when I have in front of me the Mauna Loa Observatory data for CO2 concs. (generally the true agreed source for CO2 data), and the NOAA OLR values (you’ll find both datasets at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov). If you plot CO2 concs from the mid 1970s (say 325ppm) until today (say 390ppm), OLR over that period is pretty much stuck on about 233 W/m2. And plotting the same data over the last 20 years (from 360ppm to 390ppm), the OLR actually rises from 229W/m2 to 233W/m2.

Maybe a saturation at 360ppm? Possibly? I’m not going to make that call, but makes for an interesting hypotheses. But then again I shouldn’t be wasting my breath because the science is settled after all.

Just like those IPCC GCMs which say that a signature of AGW is tropospheric warming (20oN to 20oSat about 10-12km altitude of about 0.3c to date (the IPCC and its yes-men’s methodology states a 3-fold increase in temp in this area of troposphere compared with surface temp rise, of which we’ve had a little over 0.1c in this time).

Its a real pity the science is settled because the satellite data doesn’t seem to think so. Both the HadCRUT3 and the NOAA ESRL data are both showing some slight cooling to date (about 0.03c) in this region of the troposphere. Pity about that. We might need to “adjust”, “homogonise” and “standardise” those data too!!

I thought the world’s politicians were going to cap global temperature rise by 2 degrees?! Given global temperature can be apparently be regulated like that (just like a thermostat) then obviously the (implausible) notion is that CO2 is a (not “the” – never said “the”) primary driver of climate.

i gave you a link to over 400 peer reviewed papers that show that the MWP was real and global. the MWP occurred approximately one thousand years ago. If you read the link to Jo’s blog there are several graphs which show the temps for the times you want and, yes, Graeme was correct. Also, the “peer reviewed” papers you need are referenced. I am not going to sit here and jump through a bunch of hoops for you. Either read the links and do your research or just confess to being an insincere troll who ha no life and needs to get off by wasting other people’s valuable time.

Look post hoc already you are coming across as a compulsive liar. Have you got any reason to believe that a thing I’ve said is not accurate? Do you know something about temperature trends, since the end of the holocene optimum that I do not? Are you saying “hey this doesn’t seem right to me because of this this and this?”

No I don’t think so. I think you are a liar, who point blank refuses to find evidence for your beliefs but at the same time tries to set me homework.

Speaking of Sheep, where is the empirical evidence to show that the recent temps are anything but natural variation? There is no empirical evidence. if you have it, cite it. The evidence for the proof of the existence of anthropogenic global warming has to be furnished by the proponents of the theory. Your posts are illogical, you use straw man argument as I have cited and yet you criticize others for using a straw man. That makes you a hypocrite. You engage in the typical green ad hominem attacks and have no evidence to support the AGW argument with the exception of one paper that proves nothing. Is that the best you can do? YAWN

Here I am, just passing on knowledge that is pretty much known to everyone not ignorant of this subject, and Post Hoc wants to get me jumping through hoops doing homework for him. So if you try and educate the fellow he feels he has the right to press-gang you into service?

Before I respond to his whims, involving me doing a lot of unpaid work for someone who isn’t the least bit interested in the result……

….. has anyone got any indication whatsoever that we HAVEN’T been on a cooling trend these last 5000 years?

I gave Post hoc a link to a site where they have over 400 peer reviewed papers showing that the MWP was real and global. He has ignored it, apparently. He does not seem to be able to grasp that if Vikings are being found below the permafrost in Greenland and that the corpses were buried during the MWP, then the MWP was warmer than today yet CO2 levels were lower. maybe he thinks that the Vikings dug graves below the permafrost? He is obviously either incapable of deductive reasoning or just a time bandit who has no life. Perhaps he is a paid global warming denier double agent who is paid by big oil to make ridiculous arguments that are easy to destroy in order to facilitate the attack on science by the vast, global “denier” conspiracy?

A 2000-YEAR GLOBAL TEMPERATURE RECONSTRUCTION
BASED ON NON-TREERING PROXIES

by
Craig Loehle

ENERGY &
ENVIRONMENT
VOLUME 18 No. 7+8 2007

ABSTRACT
Historical data provide a baseline for judging how anomalous recent temperature
changes are and for assessing the degree to which organisms are likely to be
adversely affected by current or future warming. Climate histories are commonly
reconstructed from a variety of sources, including ice cores, tree rings, and
sediment. Tree-ring data, being the most abundant for recent centuries, tend to
dominate reconstructions. There are reasons to believe that tree ring data may not
properly capture long-term climate changes. In this study, eighteen 2000-year-long
series were obtained that were not based on tree ring data. Data in each series were
smoothed with a 30-year running mean. All data were then converted to anomalies
by subtracting the mean of each series from that series. The overall mean series
was then computed by simple averaging. The mean time series shows quite
coherent structure. The mean series shows the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and
Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly, with the MWP being approximately 0.3°C
warmer than 20th century values at these eighteen sites.

Remember Post Hoc, all your precious hockey sticks remove the Medieval Warm Period & Little Ice Age.
Turning over countless papers prior to Mann’s bedtime story and all those other fantasies from the
esteemed exclusive team of conspirators. Even your so esteemed propaganda machine the IPCC
acknowledged its existence in previous reports.

The Medieval Warm period and Little Ice Age existed, Mann Briffer etc insinuate they didn’t,
therefore all their hockey sticks are poor science and don’t stand up to any scrutiny.

Or do you mean climate data and other proxies? Which of course by any sensible definition would not be “random” data

Sorry Scott, try again.

Anyone got any scientific evidence that shows the studies by Mann have been “debunked”? Thought no.

Actually, loads of it.

The infamous ‘hockey stick’ graph of Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH) is probably the single most discredited graph in the entire history of science.

Many studies provide data that conflict with the findings of that work of MBH (e.g. Beltrami et al “Long-term tracking of climate change by underground temperatures”, Geophysical Research Letters v.12 (2005)).

But, perhaps the most important of their studies of that work of Mann et al. was their publication in 2003 that showed it is not possible to directly replicate the work of MBH (ref. McIntyre S & McKitrick R, Energy & Environment, v 24, pp 751-771 (2003)) .

The fundamental errors in the methodology of MBH were that their statistical methodology tends to generate a graph with ‘hockey stick’ shape when fed with data that is random red noise. This was first determined by McIntyre & McKitrick.

The US National Academy of Sciences established a special committee to investigate the matter and it determined that the findings of McIntyre & McKitrick concerning the methodology were correct.

There are several reasons for the inability to directly replicate this work of MBH; not least that Mann refused to reveal his source codes to others except his co-workers. This inability to replicate this work of MBH means it has no scientific worth: i.e. this work of MBH is anecdote of similar kind to a report of a ghost sighting.

Other similar flawed studies have been conducted but they were each conducted by co-workers of Mann and they each use the same data which has not been revealed to others. When Briffa published one such study in Philosophical Transactions B of the UK’s Royal Society he was surprised to discover that the journal’s Editor insisted that he had to reveal his data. This resulted in the revelation that his ‘hockey stick’ was a function of the trees he had chosen to select from those that were available (this is known as the ‘Yamal Controversy).

And then there is the ‘divergence problem’ and ‘hide the decline’. This relates to the method used by MBH who analysed tree rings to mislead when presenting the results of their work. They studied tree rings as a method to determine global temperatures in past centuries. But the tree ring studies showed global temperature falling after ~1960 when measurements using thermometers showed global temperature was rising (i.e. the so-called ‘divergence problem’). The reason for this disagreement between the studies of tree rings and studies using thermometers is not known.

The problem for MBH was that the decline in global temperature indicated by the tree rings is wrong, or the compilations of global temperature from thermometers are wrong, or both are wrong.

Any real scientists would have explicitly stated this problem and provided all their data and methodology for scrupulous investigation by others who may be able to find the cause(s) of the problem. But the hacked (?) emails prove that they decided to do something else, instead. They decided to use “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” in recent global temperatures indicated by the tree ring studies.

The “trick” consisted of publishing graphs that presented the results of the tree ring studies for past global temperatures but truncated that data at 1960 and replaced the missing data with thermometer-derived data after that time.

No science except ‘climate science’ would claim “Mike’s Nature trick” is an acceptable presentation of data. Indeed, in any other branch of science the attempt to “hide the decline” would be considered to be serious scientific malpractice.

There is much, much more but the above is sufficient to show that you are blowing out your lower orifice whn you suggest that there is not “any scientific evidence that shows the studies by Mann have been debunked”.

Quoting Baa Humbug:
“I understand how you guys work now, you assume all scientist are wrong, and in fact you guys no more than they do, talk about hubris.”

Commenting:
The way science advances (in the real world) is that results are nothing if they can not be repeated. It is therefore in the scientist’s interest to publish the data and methods, including software – usually in the form of source code. That way, his results can be confirmed and possibly enhanced by additional analysis. The ClimateGate Gang refused to do that. If your results cannot be repeated, they are only words on a page.

Einstein is being tested unto this very day and one of his theories was confirmed (yet again) this week. Speaking of Einstein, he once postulated a “Cosmological Constant” that “pushed the Universe apart”, countering gravity. When Hubble (the Astronomer, not the telescope) proved the expansion of the Universe, Einstein admitted that his Cosmological Constant was no longer necessary and confessed that it was his biggest mistake. Around 50 years after his death, we find that the Universe is not only expanding, but it is doing so and an accelerating rate. That is to say that something is “pushing the universe apart”.
So, Einstein was so smart that, even when he thought himself wrong, he turned out to be right!
And that is how science is supposed to operate!

Thats a bad example of how science advances Westhoustongeo. Thats not so much about the advance of science, as it is about the maintenance of the cult of personality. The universe may or may not be accelerating in its expansion. But since this assumption is based on a single line of evidence, based itself on an illogical inference, its not as if we know that for sure. Secondly throwing in fudge factors and calling them fancy names has some ways to go as a form of scientific enquiry.

I was complaining about the same thing six months ago when they first started cranking the prices. Note that the wholesale electricity price is on public display because we have competitive trading at the wholesale level and this price rarely gets above 3c per kWh (average over 24 hours). How they justify a markup of more than 500% between wholesale and retail is beyond me.

However, I don’t hear many other people mentioning it so they are either grumbling quietly or just resigned to our spendthrift leaders. Even the opposition parties tiptoe around the question of electricity prices.

Barry O`Farrell gives a good speech outlining the problems we currently face.

There’s a big step from identifying the problems to finding solutions, his policies seem to consist of creating more new departments and more regulations in order to fix our top heavy structure… I guess it is difficult to ride on a “less government” platform these days.

Sadly, Barry has also swallowed the whole Greenhouse Gas reduction rubbish and is perfectly happy for electricity prices to rise higher than the ozone layer. Punish the householders, and punish small business are the universal fiscal strategies. I think I’ll vote for the Shooters Party again… they never win but it’s the thought that counts. I’ll make sure Labor goes last on every preference though.

Tel: They’ve sneaked that in haven’t they? NSW government says it will give lower income earners, pensioners $145 rebate. Well if it’s
once a year that will be grand. NOT. My electricity rebate is a few dollars more than the GST. I bet they won’t be giving us $145 per quarterly bill. Boswell is onto it. He reckons it will go up 64%.

Welcome to the new world, folks. All thanks to Al Gore who started it all, and his cronies, Hansen, Schneider and Pachauri. (P is chairman
of an oil company did you know) surely that is showing a conflict of interests, and Al with his CCTs and investments in Green energy.

Is this the same Wegman that has been exposed as being coached by a Republican aid and didn’t even consult Mann when testifying before the hearings, yet was in constant contact with McIiintock, couldn’t be him could it?

You were challenged on it at the very next post # 129.

Then we have this from you,at post # 125:

Anyone got any scientific evidence that shows the studies by Mann have bee “debunked”? Thought no.

Richard Courtney gave you a long reply at post # 143.

You after posting many times suddenly vanish and not reply to both Bob Malloy and Richard Courtney.

Yawn, someone who might be called gary eck or Robert black but has the same IP was held in moderation ages ago and asked to use manners or “provide evidence”. Whoever this two-named emailler is, I’ve replied off line reminding him that none of his comments will be posted until he addresses the original point and reason his comments were held months ago. But the delusional stream of comments comes in. Who ever you are, you are a dishonest commenter if you can’t stick to a point and provide either an answer or an apology for calling us baseless names. I can see in the small percentage of your words that I bother to read, that you somehow expect me to provide the free service of editing out your ad homs and argument from authority, and weeding through your smears as if I should provide a free community service to any rude illogical commenter by fishing out any valid point they might make (that I haven’t already debunked)? The answer is (as Graeme Bird so aptly put it elsewhere) if I do that, “I’d end up a serf to stupidtown.”

You must meet standards here so I don’t have to edit your comments. You’ve proven over and over that you can’t reason, until you show you can, and you are honest, your comments are disappearing into the ether. Don’t assume I bother reading them, I scan them for keywords that show you have lifted your standards and now meet the basic requirements of posting here.

I don’t offer free therapy and advice for delusional brains. (What makes you think you have the right to demand it?)

You realise Jo, these people who do nothing to interrupt thought
and reason are basically there to do just that. The AGW hypothesis
is floundering. They know that… they are becoming frantic.

They are now arguing not about the nonsense and unproven AGW hypothesis, (personally I don’t think it requires the title hypothesis it’s a scam, fraud, corrupted data etc) or substantiate
their fraud or misconceptions but to disrupt and insult other’s who do not agree with them.

How can we the AGW and solution to tax Carbon (or Methane) is a rort. To save the planet! Bulssh to make some people richer through CCT’s and clean energy involvement, including nuclear, solar and geothermal, and particularly the defunk wind farms as described by Dr Richard S.Courtney.

All they can do is say we are dillusional? But for what reasons?

To me who wish to support the AGW scam, and what the solutions may cost humanity based on a lie, are guilty by association by crims like Pachauri (particularly) Mann, Hansen, Jones, and of course the prime prince of the Inconvenient Truth Al Gore and all their associates in this crime, including the 40 CSIRO who were
paid to produce data to the IPCC! Mind you I don’t think some of the CSIRO employees were actually in agreement that droughts in Australia weren’t caused by CO2 or climate change. But they had to toe the line with the governments point of view.

Personally the Australian Government have tried to apply their
climate change solution all based on the IPCC predictions.

[...] Manipulating history to fool and tax the masses, Direct evidence the claimed warming is a fabrication, What the public really thinks of global warming, Our hot dry future is being flooded out, Claim after claim, alarmist prediction after alarmist prediction has failed to come true, Biofuels increase CO2, Obama – President of the depressed and depression, Alarmist attempting to fight back with their usual armory of lies, [...]

Ok, so the data has been altered. Either the Global warming guys did it or the global iceage guys did, maybe even both. My biggest concern is that we are taking a 200 year snapshot of a world billions of years old and saying we are doing something to destroy the world as we know it. Did humans cause the end of every ice age? With the Earthquakes lately it shows the Earth changes and so does it’s climate. Eventually LA will be up near San Fransisco and thus LA will have rain. Is this our fault? No. This is nature doing what it always does, change. We are not causing the impact. GE, Al Gore, Mann, and the rest are looking for political and economical gains. They ignore not just current trends but world lifespan trends. When these same type of people claimed Hurricane Katrina was our fault, they failed to see the 70 year cycle of hurricanes and even the bigger cycle spanning millenia. We need to look at the Earth’s history when dealing with Earth changes, not at our lifetime histories.